Her Native Colors - Hardcover

YA Female friendship is the focus of Hyde's first novel. Phoebe Martin hasn't seen her childhood friend Molly for six years, but she feels that she must go to Molly's wedding back East. Phoebe, a divorced mother of a four-year-old son, is an up-and-coming associate in a prestigious San Francisco law firm. Molly, who has never left New England, teaches tenth-grade science, weaves, and makes quilts. Phoebe's trip is a disaster. Molly is pregnant and fights her mother's wish for a traditional wedding. Phoebe criticizes Molly for wasting her life in the backwoods, while Molly feels that Phobe's work is depriving her of time for herself and her son. Hyde has an excellent eye for detail, and her characters and settings are three-dimensional. While the author is rather heavy on the introspective musings of both Phoebe and Molly, readers will enjoy seeing the modern dilemmas of marriage, motherhood, career, family, and friendship pictured in emotional and empathetic tones. Diana Hirsch, PGCMLS, Md.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this promising first novel, Phoebe Martin and Molly Adams are childhood friends whose paths have diverged. While Phoebe attended law school in California and landed a job at a top-notch firm, had a baby and got divorced, Molly returned to their hometown to teach school and develop her skills as a weaver. A hasty wedding is planned when Molly finds herself pregnant. Flying back to Vermont with four-year-old Andrew, Phoebe almost wishes her dictatorial boss had insisted she work around the clock, as usual. As the friends struggle unsuccessfully toward a new understanding, past differences are aired and both women are forced to question the choices they've made thus far. Irritating parenthetic asides slow the reader down, but to her credit, Hyde delves well beneath the surface of Phoebe's superwoman exterior to present a balanced, sometimes painfully funny, assessment of the price she has been paying all along.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.